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As per my other thread, So far, BTRFS has won (In RAID1, since it's the only reliable type).

What I'm having trouble deciphering is how concern over bit rot, and random flips, is:

a. Un-needed (due to firmware CRC etc)

b. Sensible

c. Somewhat Paranoid (this is where I'm comfortable)

d. Beyond Paranoid

e. Just pure bullshit.

I read about people fixing significant data on their ZFS pools from bitrot, and "yay thanks ZFS!" threads.I see similar threads from SnapRAID users, having recovered data from old snapshots that were lost from corruption.

But these could fall into the whole "People report when things go wrong, not when they go right" mentality.

But then I read articles such as this (and there are MANY others, especially on Reddit):

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Stone lasts, but it's not good for weathering, wear, or general rough treatment. Which is where the iridium comes in: it's damn near impossible to wreck, short of dropping it in a volcano, and it takes tech good enough to smelt that you're likely going to have microscopes capable of reading the data and realising the puck is worth more than material value.

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Surv HDDs? MSY has them priced about 10% above the general WD Blue and Seagate Barracudas. Aren't they generally slower rpm? I'd also assume they're also aimed at long run situations though that said I've run generic desktop drives in machines nonstop since the early 2000s.

Long term storage - my feeling is that what was hot 10 years ago is ho-hum now and the price situation is still to the point where you could just go wholesale replacement provided you're in some reasonable range like under 20 TB.

Tape - for sure they can be long lasting but the environmental and handling concern for tape is such that you don't want it outside it's comfort zone re temp or humidity for more than a couple of hours every month. Long term tape/floppy can have the problem of the recording media just flaking off the backing surface, 5.25 floppy has the additional problem that the tissue inside the jacket can go bad and just crumble away, the outer jackets can warp though these can be overcome by just taking the disk out of the jacket and copying to another one.

Bitrot real - yep, that's why CDs and some magnetic media have you-beaut ECC systems that add 20% extra to the overall data payload. Combine that with the proper RAID types and it can be double or more that overhead but chances of successful data retention are higher.

What would worry me long term though - put a HDD in the cupboard, all the ECC in the world isn't worth jack shit if the bearing decides to seize up or the spindle motor dies.

Problem is, HDDs are now well and truly "consumer" items and as such the give a shit factor from the manufacturers seems to be declining.

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Surv HDDs? MSY has them priced about 10% above the general WD Blue and Seagate Barracudas. Aren't they generally slower rpm? I'd also assume they're also aimed at long run situations though that said I've run generic desktop drives in machines nonstop since the early 2000s.

No, the 4TB Surveillance (PIPELINE) drive is about $20 cheaper per drive than any other at MSY.

It might be 'the only one' but it sure is!

It's 5900RPM I think, which is more than fine for write once read only videos with a user base of 3......

The only thing I heard which might or might not be true, (I can't find any confirmation), is that Surveillance drives have much less firmware based error checking\CRC; because a few milliseconds of corrupted video is less important than keeping a continuous stream of recording data.

But I can't confirm this.

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Surv HDDs? MSY has them priced about 10% above the general WD Blue and Seagate Barracudas. Aren't they generally slower rpm? I'd also assume they're also aimed at long run situations though that said I've run generic desktop drives in machines nonstop since the early 2000s.

No, the 4TB Surveillance (PIPELINE) drive is about $20 cheaper per drive than any other at MSY.

It might be 'the only one' but it sure is!

It's 5900RPM I think, which is more than fine for write once read only videos with a user base of 3......

The only thing I heard which might or might not be true, (I can't find any confirmation), is that Surveillance drives have much less firmware based error checking\CRC; because a few milliseconds of corrupted video is less important than keeping a continuous stream of recording data.

But I can't confirm this.

Hmm,

I don't do security much but I do trouble-shoot it for a mate quite a bit - what you are suspecting is pretty much the case, nobody ever notices with slow scan CCTV if a few frames are corrupted.

Personally I don't like the drives much, seen too many fail so I usually put in "real" drives :)